


by the time the first bombs fell we were already bored

by sinnabar (fishtank)



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Episode Related, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 15:36:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5933566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishtank/pseuds/sinnabar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scenes from a suburban nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	by the time the first bombs fell we were already bored

**Author's Note:**

> Missing scenes from "Mac & Dennis Move to the Suburbs", a.k.a. the episode that ruined my entire life. Content warning for animal death and abuse/neglect, mental health issues including depression and psychotic episodes, violent/homicidal thoughts, misogynistic language and _extremely_ toxic codependency in both directions. If you've seen the episode, you know what I'm talking about.
> 
> Title is from "The Suburbs" by Arcade Fire, naturally.

Things don’t just snap right back to normal after their experiment with living in the suburbs, and not only because they wind up having to share a king-size bed with Dee for a year (the old man, thankfully, fucks off once it becomes apparent that Frank doesn’t actually intend to pay him).

Mac and Dennis are perfectly civil to each other, and that’s part of the problem; there’s a tension, a brittleness to their relationship that’s never been there before, and Mac is starting to worry that maybe they won’t be able to fix things this time around. Certain things were said, certain lines were crossed that can’t be uncrossed.

Also, he might have baked a dead dog into a pasta dish and fed it to Dennis in a misguided bid for attention. In retrospect, he can see that that was possibly a touch overdramatic, but it had seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. It’s been a weird month.

“That shit back there, that wasn’t us,” Dennis says a few nights later, when Dee is out doing whatever it is she does for fun and it’s just the two of them on opposite sides of the gigantic bed. Without Dee in the middle to act as a buffer, the gap seems bigger than usual somehow, a yawning expanse of bare mattress stretching out between them. “It was that house, that whole situation.”

It’s the first time either of them has made any attempt to talk about it directly, and Mac jumps on it with enthusiasm. “Right? I was thinking maybe the house was like, haunted? Like maybe it was built on an Indian burial ground or some shit, and that’s what was driving us crazy.”

Dennis slants him a narrow look, the one he gets whenever he thinks somebody has just said something especially dumb. “Well… no, I don’t think the house was _haunted,_ Mac. We’re just not built for the suburban lifestyle. Much as it pains me to admit it, Frank was right: we’re city men.”

“So, I mean… we’re good, right?” Mac asks. He doesn’t intend to actually apologize for the dog thing, any more than he expects Dennis to apologize for saying he hated him and calling him pathetic – that’s not how they work – but he still needs to know, one way or another, whether they can come back from this.

Dennis smiles; the space between them seems to shrink even though neither of them moves an inch.

“Yeah, man. We’re solid.”

\--

Dennis thinks he might actually end up killing Mac this time. He’s definitely going to kill _somebody_ ; the rage is burning white-hot behind his eyes, a fine red mist over everything narrowing his vision to a single point. He’s so goddamn sick of this whole thing: of the assholes taking up the road on the way to work every morning, of their overly friendly Stepford neighbor with his insipid small talk, of Mac and his passive-aggressive bullshit most of all. Dennis has been stretching himself thin, damn near killing himself to get to work every day and earn some goddamn money, all while Mac has been doing precisely nothing, as far as he can tell. He hasn’t managed to fix a single thing about the house, he killed the damn dog, and apparently the one meal he can actually cook has been coming out of a goddamn box for the last month. And he _still_ can’t stop whining, like he’s the one with the raw end of the deal here.

Dennis is barely aware of grabbing the poker, but when the doorbell rings he’s momentarily distracted from Mac, consumed instead by visions of how satisfying it would be to crack the damn thing over that smug asshole Wally’s fucking head.

_How’s that for a hot one, bitch?_

The sight of the rest of the gang stood on the doorstep, with their champagne and their congratulations, is unexpected enough to give him pause, and the haze of fury dissipates, just a little. That’s all it takes for him to notice the glint of satisfaction in Frank’s eyes and realize that the bastard _planned_ this. Suddenly winning the bet doesn’t seem worth it; he’ll gladly take a year of sharing a bed with his sister and some random old guy if it means getting out of this hell. The thought of spending even another day here is more than he can handle, never mind another year.

He and Mac both forfeit at the exact same time, with one second left on the clock. It feels more right than anything else has for the last month.

\--

Dennis Jr. stops begging for food, or really doing much of anything at all, and it maybe takes Mac longer than it should do to realize why. The only reason he notices at all is that eventually the weird smell coming from one of the kitchen cabinets gets impossible to ignore or cover up with air freshener, and when he goes to investigate it turns out the dog must’ve crawled in there to die, its sad little body curled up in a corner.

He feels bad about it, but it’s not like it’s his fault. Mac doesn’t really know how to take care of a pet; Poppins had mostly fended for himself, but apparently other dogs can’t just get by scavenging whatever crap they find lying about the house and still live past the age of twenty.

He blames Dennis, really, for putting this extra responsibility on him. Like he wasn’t already stressed out enough as it is.

He half expects Dennis to be angry, when he finds out – he’d bought the dog for Mac as a gift, after all – but his total non-reaction when he gets home and sees the grave is somehow worse, a final twist of the knife.

Mac digs Dennis Jr. back up later that evening while Dennis Sr. is in the shower, whistling to himself as he shovels piles of dirt and thinks about adding an extra ingredient to his mac and cheese.

That’ll teach Dennis not to take him for granted.

\--

Dennis feels like he’s losing his grip on reality, like the bottom is dropping out of the world and he’s in free-fall. Mac _still_ hasn’t fixed the pool filter, despite repeatedly promising to get on it, and subsequently Dennis can’t remember the last time he actually slept the night through. He’s sleepwalking through his routine, running on fumes, and the days have started to bleed together, a never ending carousel ride of traffic, work, and macaroni dinners.

Even the few hours he spends at Paddy’s every day don’t offer much of a reprieve; Dee is being irritating as shit since she had to go and get her ‘side action’ on the bet, and Frank and Charlie have withdrawn into their own weird bubble with the Russian hats thing. The power balance within the group feels off, somehow, without Mac around to back him up – Charlie is just as likely to side with Dee as he is to join Dennis in insulting her, and Frank is always more interested in pursuing his own agenda than anything else.

It’s not like it hasn’t occurred to Dennis that he could just _ask_ Mac to come back to work – even the idea of listening to Creed for a solid hour on the commute doesn’t sound as terrible as it had three weeks ago – but he doesn’t want to be the first to back down. And anyway, it’s not like Mac has offered; he doesn’t bother to do his hair anymore or even get dressed some days, and as far as Dennis can tell he seems perfectly content to bitch about the situation without actually making any effort to change it.

Well, fine. Two can play at that game.

He starts staying overnight in the city whenever he can get away with it, sleeping in his car and telling Mac he’s with girls when he inevitably asks – mostly because Dennis knows it’ll piss him off. On the nights he does come home, they fuck harsh and angry, without looking each other in the eyes, until the day comes that they can’t bear to touch each other at all.

Dennis fantasizes about finally snapping and indulging in his urge to commit road rage, or stabbing their nosy fucking neighbor in the neck. Sometimes he thinks about killing Mac, just choking the life out of him, wrapping fingers around his throat and squeezing until he finally shuts up.

He’s still not sleeping, is the problem; his idle fantasies spill over into nightmares and hallucinations until he’s seeing things that aren’t really there and he’s not sure what’s real and what’s not. On the nights he manages to drift off for a few hours he inevitably wakes soaked in cold sweat, wondering if he’s actually crossed that line, and he pads down the hall to Mac’s room, stands outside his door and listens to the reassuring sounds of him tossing and turning until the panicked feeling releases its vice-grip on his chest.

Then the next day, he gets to do it all over again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

\--

It’s not like Mac deliberately sets out to ignore the list of chores Dennis gives him or anything. Even if he chafes a bit – okay, a _lot_ – at being stuck inside all day like some bitch housewife, he knows that the work needs doing. They need to make the house livable if they’re going to win the bet with Frank, and the sooner he gets things fixed up, the sooner he can go back to work. He knows all that.

It’s just that it all seems like way too much effort; some days it’s a struggle just to shower and put on clothes, and he has zero energy left over after all that to figure out pool filters or take out the trash.

He misses going to work – not the actual _work_ part of going to work, which was always kind of a drag, but hanging out at the bar and shooting the shit with the rest of the gang. He misses Charlie and Frank and even Dee, going slowly stir-crazy with only himself and Dennis Jr. for company. He doesn’t want to be ungrateful, because it was sweet of Dennis to get him the dog and the thing is admittedly cute as fuck, but the conversations are pretty one-sided and it shits on the floor and it’s honestly exhausting to be constantly trying to work out what it wants.

Mac tries taking him for a walk around the block one day, figuring the fresh air might do them both good, but he feels out of place, doesn’t know how to respond when all their idiot neighbors wave at him robotically and start trying to talk about the weather (why is it always the goddamn weather?). He wonders whether any of these people, with their manicured lawns and their perfect kids, would be quite so eager to talk to him if they knew about his criminal father or his drug dealing past. This isn’t Mac’s world, and he’s never going to fit in here, no matter how much effort he puts into playing house.

The craziest thing is he actually misses Dennis, which makes no sense given that _too much_ Dennis is part of why he’s feeling like shit in the first place. But he misses the way that he and Dennis used to be, when they didn’t eat in stony silence every night and go out of their way to avoid actually talking to each other. They still have sex sometimes, but it’s passionless and resentful, the way Mac imagines it must be between married couples who’ve long grown sick of each other; Dennis won’t look at him while they do it, and he always retreats to the shower straight after.

Some nights Dennis doesn’t even come home at all, spins some line about getting lucky that Mac calls bullshit on right away because he knows for a fact that Dennis hasn’t had a date in months. Still, the frustration of not knowing exactly what Dennis is doing is killing him, and so he eventually puts in a call to Charlie, asks if he can borrow one of the guys Charlie pays to keep tabs on the Waitress to follow Dennis when he leaves work.

“You okay, man? You sound kinda weird,” Charlie says, and he sounds so sincerely concerned that Mac has to grit his teeth together and count to ten to stop himself from either spilling the whole ugly truth or crying like a little bitch.

Once he’s gotten himself more or less under control, he insists that he’s fine, they’re _both_ fine, reiterates that under no circumstances should Charlie tell Frank about any of this, and hangs up the phone before he can make any more of an ass of himself.

\--

Dennis buys the stupid dog as a peace offering of sorts, once it becomes apparent that Frank is taking the bet one hundred percent seriously and is absolutely capable of forcing them to sleep with an old man for a year. Mac is obviously lonely, cooped up in the big empty house all day with nobody to talk to, and Dennis figures that if he has something to keep him company then he might actually succeed in getting some work done.

He’s always been more of a cat person himself, but it’s not like he’ll have to see the thing while he’s at work, and if it keeps Mac happy then that’s just one less headache for Dennis to deal with.

Still, the look on Mac’s face alone when Dennis reveals his surprise is almost worth it, and watching him gush over the puppy with that big stupid smile and his hair sticking up in a billion directions, Dennis feels something like genuine fondness for him for the first time in weeks.

It’s _definitely_ worth it when Mac enthusiastically demonstrates his gratitude by blowing Dennis right there in the front room, wet and messy and eager. It’s still early, the blinds are wide open and Wally or any of their other neighbors could walk by and see them at any moment, and knowing that just makes Dennis hotter, makes him tighten his grip on Mac’s hair and will himself not to come as he imagines how scandalized they’d be.

For the first time since the day they moved in, he feels optimistic, like maybe they can survive this after all. They just have to hold on for a couple more weeks, and then they’ll be living an all-expenses-paid life of luxury for a year, courtesy of one Frank Reynolds.

\--

After their midnight conference in the hallway, Dennis follows Mac back to his room, slides into Mac’s bed like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

“The pool filter isn’t as loud in here,” is all he offers by way of an explanation.

“Yeah, but that goddamn chirping is worse.” It’s on the tip of Mac’s tongue to suggest that Dennis should just move into his room permanently if he thinks he’ll sleep better, but that seems too weird, too domestic, too far outside the rules of their arrangement.

They don’t really talk about it, this thing between them. Mac can’t even remember exactly when it began; it’s just something they slowly slid into over time, and now it seems like it’s always been there. It’s not all the time; sometimes they go for months without so much as a drunken handjob, and then one day the dam bursts and they’re at it every other night for a while until the incidences get further and further apart and eventually they stop altogether again.

It isn’t gay, because it’s not like they’re dating or in a real couple or any of that shit. They’re just best friends and roommates who sometimes have sex, and as long as Mac doesn’t give it any more thought than that, he can be content with it.

Tonight, they work each other up with a slow grind, too exhausted for anything more. He always likes Dennis best like this, needy and desperate, making soft sounds of pleasure and clawing at Mac’s shoulders with blunted nails. Mac dips his head to taste the salt that’s pooled at the hollow of Dennis’s throat when he arches back against the pillow; when Dennis comes, he exhales Mac’s name into the stillness of the room.

Dennis falls asleep almost immediately afterwards, just drops off right there in Mac’s bed without even bothering to clean up first. Mac watches him for a while, the rise and fall of his chest, the dark fan of lashes against his cheekbones. The suburbs might not have done much to soften Dennis’s edges, but he always seems less harsh in sleep – more vulnerable, younger even.

There’s a sweet, sharp ache blooming in Mac’s chest, because he thinks that if they were different people, if this house wasn’t such a goddamn nightmare, he could have liked this life with Dennis. As things are, he doubts that either one of them can go on like this for much longer without exploding in spectacular fashion.

Tomorrow they’ll invite the gang over, see if there’s any way they can get out of this bet with Frank and get back to their normal lives in the city. Tonight, Mac lies awake next to Dennis and allows himself to pretend, just once, that this is something he could have.

\--

“Where’s Mac?” Dee asks the first time Dennis shows up for work alone. “You haven’t snapped and killed him already, have you? Because we’ve been placing bets on how long it would take.”

Dennis is already on edge after his sleepless night and hellish commute, and he’s in no mood to be dealing with his sister’s bullshit right now. “No, Dee, I haven’t killed him. Mac is fine; he’s just taking a personal day, is all.”

“Nice,” Frank says approvingly, which immediately raises Dennis’s concerns. “You’ve got to establish dominance early, keep them in their place so they don’t start getting all uppity and demanding help with the housework.”

“Ew. Frank, why do you always have to take everything to the grossest possible conclusion?” Dennis sighs. “There’s a few things that need fixing around the house, so Mac and I had a discussion like mature, rational adults and agreed that this would be the best way to work things until they’re sorted. And why are you talking like he’s my wife, anyway?”

“Yeah, I’d have thought if anyone was going to be the wife it’d be you, Dennis,” Charlie says. “You’re the one that’s like, all feminine and willowy and shit.”

_Willowy?_ “Well, Charlie, much as I appreciate the compliment, I can’t help but feel that you’re still missing the point. Neither of us would be the wife, because we’re both men. And also, we’re not married!”

“Uh-huh,” Dee says, entirely too skeptically for Dennis’s liking. Then she adds, all in a rush: “Of course, I think it’s great that you guys are doing the whole suburban thing! You must be living the dream, right?”

Dennis would be more grateful for the support if he wasn’t all too aware that the only thing she really cares about is keeping them out of her precious apartment, but he’ll take what he can get.

After that, work passes entirely too slowly. Frank and Charlie have a new thing going with Russian hats, which they try to explain to him three different times before eventually giving up when they realize he’s still none the wiser. He misses Mac more than he cares to admit, which is frankly alarming considering that it’s only been a matter of hours since he left Mac at the house that morning. He finds himself thinking uncomfortably about what Dee said all those years ago, about them being married or codependent or whatever, and wonders if maybe she had a point.

He still has to stop himself from grinning like an asshole when Mac texts him to check in at lunchtime.

“Honey, I’m home!” he calls when he gets in that evening, like if he makes a joke out of the situation it’ll be less weird. Still, he’s so honestly relieved to be back that he greets Mac by kissing him the way he knows Mac likes to be kissed, deep and dirty with plenty of tongue and just a hint of teeth. They hardly ever make out unless it’s as a prelude to sex - and even then Dennis still isn’t exactly a fan - and so Mac looks more than a little stunned when Dennis finally releases him.

“What was that for?”

“Does there need to be a reason?” Dennis shrugs. He feels uneasy again, aware that this is way past the boundaries of what most people would consider acceptable within a friendship, and he mentally berates himself for letting the gang and their married couple jibes get under his skin.

They could have a good thing going here, if they can just manage to iron out the kinks, and he’s not about to let Frank or Dee or anybody else mess that up for him.

\--

Mac can’t get over just how fucking _huge_ the house is.

He’d thought they’d lucked out with their old apartment, but this – this is some next-level shit. He’s never in his life imagined that he might end up living somewhere like this, and he doesn’t quite succeed in containing his giddiness as he dashes from room to room to marvel at the sheer amount of _space_ on display.

Dennis manages to be somewhat more restrained in his reactions, but Mac can tell that he’s secretly every bit as excited, he’s just trying to play it cool or whatever. He seems to be amused by Mac’s enthusiasm, anyway, trailing after him with a subtle smirk playing about his lips.

Maybe the best part is that the house is already fully furnished, like it’s just been waiting all this time for them to come along and move in. It doesn’t take long to unpack their shit – they don’t exactly have much, between the fire and squatting in Dee’s living room for a year – and once they’re done, Dennis turns to Mac with a thoughtful expression, running his fingers along the back of the sofa.

“So. You wanna break in some of this furniture?” he drawls, raising his eyebrows suggestively. He’s obviously aiming for seductive, but it’s mostly kind of ridiculous, and Mac can’t help it; he bursts out laughing. Dennis really must be in a good mood, because he only glowers in mock offense for a few seconds before rolling his eyes and smiling sheepishly.

Mac ends up fucking him over the arm of the sofa, reveling in their newfound freedom. Since they’ve been living at Dee’s, their opportunities to do this have been few and far between, mostly limited to rushed handjobs or quickies in the bathroom, and now that they finally have the time and the space to do things properly again it’s better than ever, Dennis urging Mac to go harder and faster as Mac sinks his fingers into Dennis’s skinny hips and tries not to fall apart completely.

They can’t last long, not at that pace; it’s all over far too quickly, and they collapse sweaty and spent on the sofa afterwards, Dennis’s face tucked against Mac’s neck while Mac runs his hand absently up and down Dennis’s side.

(It’s not cuddling, because Mac is way too manly for that shit and anyway, Dennis is about as cuddly as a cactus most days. They’re just – basking.)

Dennis’s eyes are warm and inviting like they never are when he raises his head to grin lazily down at Mac, still flushed and disheveled. “Here’s to the first day of the rest of our lives,” he says.

_Yeah_ , Mac thinks, _winning this bet is going to be a piece of cake._


End file.
